The party are briefed by
Languid Relaxation on behalf of Pentagonal Pectoral. He tells them that a particular group of hunters contracted to provide specimens for the Ambassador's menagerie project have become unreliable of late, bringing back fewer captures than expected. The hunters are blaming bandit activity, and the party are sent to find out what the problem is and solve it.
The party travel to the Claw and Carapace, a bar frequented by the hunters' guild, to find out where the problematic team are at the moment.
Hunters are reluctant to talk to non-guildmembers, but offer a way the party can earn their trust - take out a cliff-face eel broodmother that they've been contracted to kill, but that no-one wants to do because it's an unpleasant job.
The party hire a buggy from one of the hunters, Genuine Solstice, and make their way to the cave eel nesting site. They fight their way in through a few cliff-face eels, then meet and dispatch the broodmother. Lugging the head with them, they leave the cave again to find that the buggy has been sabotaged - the fuel lines have been cut.
The party lack the expertise to repair the buggy, and instead opt to walk back to town, encountering Sirutan armourdillos along the way.
On making it back to the bar, they're told where the hunting party are expected to be. Genuine Solstice, interestingly, is no longer there.
The party hike to the location they were given, dealing with more Armourdillos on the way. Eventually, they find a recently abandoned base camp, succumbing to decay.
Investigating the camp while avoiding detection by decaying trackers, they find a territory map of nearby creatures, a brief of the desired capture targets from Pentagonal Pectoral, the charred remains of a note with “Exchange in the usual place - A.W.” still legible, and a damaged hologram of a skitter, which periodically would scream loudly, attracting the attention of the trackers.
Beloved Fortress manages to repair the hologram projector, allowing it to be used as a decoy.
Using the territory map, they manage to track down the hunters, who are stalking a herd of skitters. Spying on them through his sniper scope, Wretched Export determines that they are using live guns rather than tranq rifles, and are definitely not geared for live capture of animals.
The party manage to sneak around the herd without alarming any of them, and reach the hunters just in time to see them spring the ambush, killing several skitters.
They confront the hunters and ask what's going on. They discover that this is technically all above board, though very much against the spirit of their contract with Pectoral. It turns out that the contract was badly written on Pectoral's end, and has an overly generous wastage clause - the hunters still get paid if a hunt results in the death of the animal. It seems that they've found another client who wants dead animals, and so the hunters have been double dipping - getting paid twice for one hunt. They claim that they were always planning on actually fulfilling the contract - eventually.
The hunters don't seem too thrilled by the idea of the party ruining their little scheme, and offer a choice - either they can cut the party in on the deal, or things can get violent.
The party choose to be cut in, and are taken to help hunt a Sirutan Mega-Crab, which the hunters had received a request for but weren't confident about their ability to hunt alone. They successfully manage to bring it down, and part ways with the promise of keeping quiet about what they've seen and a cut of the profits from the hunt.